Enemy at the Gates (18 page)

Riding down the main road, the workers passed the oil-tank farm on a hillside above the primitive trench headquarters in which Vassili Chuikov sweltered and prepared for the next phase of the German offensive.

The general had just received a letter from his wife, Valentina, living in Kuibyshev almost four hundred miles northeast of Stalingrad. She told her husband she had seen him in a newsreel; she said the children were fine. Her tone was cheerful and relaxed.

But the general knew differently: His aide had learned that Chuikov's youngest daughter was suffering from acute dysentery and the family was having great difficulty getting food, clothing, and other household necessities. Lacking even soap, they used a mustard preparation to wash themselves. This distressing news only added to Chuikov's mental burden as he struggled with the daily threat of extinction. The strain was beginning to take its toll. His body was covered with eczema, which left scaly, itchy sores on his skin and forced him to bandage his hands to absorb oozing lesions on his fingers. When doctors suggested that he get some rest on the far shore, Chuikov angrily rejected their advice. With the enemy massing on the outskirts of the factories, he was afraid to leave Stalingrad even for a moment.

Fortunately, new troops were arriving via the new river crossings Chuikov had improvised after losing the downtown ferry landing. Now the Skudri Crossing serviced the area from Rynok down to the tractor works and, to this exposed mooring, boats came at night to avoid the incessant German bombardment that made daylight trips suicidal. The most vital link, however, was Crossing 62, a cluster of moorings behind the Red October and Barrikady plants where the majority of soldiers and materiel debarked under overhanging palisades. This landing site was reasonably safe as long as the Germans failed to seize the nearby factories.

The nightly voyages to Crossings 62 and Skudri were a ghastly shock to soldiers joining the battle. The sight of a city on fire, the deep rumble of thousands of guns, instinctively made them recoil. But Communist party agitators,
politrook,
were always with them, working with ferocious zeal to calm them down. The
politrook
led the way to the ferries, to tugs like the twenty-six-year-old
Abkhazets;
and there they handed out pamphlets entitled "What a Soldier Needs to Know and How to Act in City Fighting." Usually, the agitators were the first ones on board. Like sheep, the soldiers followed. Then, as the boats slowly moved out into the river, the
pout rook
unobtrusively took up stations along the rails. To prevent desertions over the side they kept their hands on their pistol holsters.

From their vantage point on Mamaev Hill, the Germans always spotted these boats and called for artillery fire on them. As the shells whistled down, the political officers diverted the soldiers' attention by reading newspapers loudly, or passing out mail from home. In this way the troops were somewhat distracted. When men were hit, screamed, and died, the
politrook
worked harder to keep the rest of the group from succumbing to mob fear. Sometimes they failed, and soldiers leaped into the Volga. The
politrook
emptied their guns into these swimmers.

In this manner, nearly one hundred thousand new troops had been ferried into Stalingrad by October; an influx equalling seven full divisions and two brigades. But they were killed so quickly that Chuikov still had only fifty-three thousand troops left who were capable of bearing arms. In less than a month, the Sixtysecond Army had lost more than eighty thousand men, killed, wounded, or missing.

To bring ammunition and food into the city, Chuikov had thrown together auxiliary "roads" to supplement the ferry pipeline. These footbridges, each several hundred yards long, joined Stalingrad to Zaitsevski Island in the middle of the Volga. Two of them were blown apart several times and had to be rebuilt. The southernmost link, formed by joining wooden rafts and barrels with iron bars and steel hawsers, was relatively sturdy, but even so, the footbridge was dangerous. It swayed badly from the force of bombs exploding nearby, frequently toppling soldiers into the river. But across this unusual highway came a steady trickle of men carrying on their backs the bullets, grenades, and shells needed for daily fighting.

Now the Germans switched the focus of their attack from the downtown area of the city to the factories in the north, trying to soften the Russian defenses with nonstop artillery fire. On October 2, German shells blanketed the industrial zone and behind the Red October Plant, the supposedly empty oil tanks blew up with a shattering roar. Flaming fuel rolled swiftly down the hill to the Volga, where it became a ghastly wave. Across the river, onlookers screamed a warning to a large rowboat making for the eastern shore. But it was too far out to turn back and, when the wall of flame reached it, the oars reared up like firewings as the doomed passengers tried to beat out the fire. Through the smoke, spectators saw the sides of the boat blaze from the flaming oil. The boat's occupants stood up and jumped. Their heads bobbed briefly in the middle of the inferno, and then the flames passed relentlessly over the tragic scene.

The same fires nearly incinerated Chuikov and the entire headquarters staff. Every telephone line burned away and, when Chuikov jumped out of his dugout, he was blinded by the dense smoke.

Chief of Staff Krylov shouted, "Everyone stay where they are. Let's get to work in the dugouts that are still intact. . . . Establish contact with the troops by radio." But when he saw Chuikov, he whispered: "What do you think? Will we be able to stand it?"

"Yes, of course," Chuikov replied. "But just in case, let's clean our pistols!"

From across the river, Front Headquarters was afraid the fire had killed everyone in the dugouts. By radio, it kept asking: "Where are you, where are you?"

The answer finally crackled through, "We're where the most flames and smoke are."

The Germans were monitoring the conversation and concentrated their fire on the holocaust. Mortar shells killed men in the doorway to Chuikov's dugout, and he moved quickly, this time up the shore line, closer to the tractor factory, the complex that the Germans were preparing to attack from three sides.

In the midst of preparations by both armies for the final struggle, a sinister personal combat reached its climax in no-man's-land. The two adversaries knew each other only by reputation. Major Konings had arrived from Germany to duel Vassili Zaitsev.

The Russians first heard of Konings's presence when a prisoner revealed the major was wandering the front lines, familiarizing himself with the terrain. Upon hearing the news, Col. Nikolai Batyuk, the commander of the 284th Division, called a meeting of his sniper group to brief them on the danger.

"I think that the German supersniper from Berlin will be easy meat for us. Is that right, Zaitsev?"

"That's right, Comrade colonel," Zaitsev agreed. But first, he had "to find him, study his habits and methods and . . . wait the right moment for one, and only one well-aimed shot."

Zaitsev had no idea how his antagonist worked. He had killed many German sharpshooters, but only after watching their habits for days. In Konings's case, his camouflage, firing patterns, ruses, all these pieces of the mosaic were missing.

On the other hand, German intelligence had studied Russian leaflets describing Soviet sniper techniques, and Zaitsev's mannerisms had been bountifully illustrated by Russian propagandists. Major Konings must have absorbed this information; Zaitsev had no idea when he would strike.

For several days, Russian marksmen searched the ruins of Stalingrad through their field glasses. They came to Zaitsev with strategies, novel and fresh, but the grim Siberian rejected their advice. He had to wait until Konings made the first move.

During this period nothing unusual occurred. Then, in rapid succession, two Soviet snipers fell victim to single rifle shots. To Zaitsev it was obvious that Major Konings had announced the beginning of their personal duel. So the Russian went looking for his foe.

He crawled to the edge of no-man's-land between Mamaev Hill and the Red October Plant and surveyed the chosen field of battle. Studying the enemy lines through binoculars, he saw no irregularity: The terrain was familiar, with trenches and bunkers in the same patterns he had memorized in past weeks.

Throughout the afternoon, Zaitsev and a friend, Nikolai Kulikov, lay behind cover, running the glasses back and forth, back and forth, searching for a clue. In the midst of the constant daily bombardment, they ignored the big war and looked for just one man.

As the sun began to set, a helmet bobbed unevenly along a German trench. Zaitsev thought of shooting, but his instincts warned him it might be a ruse, that Konings had a partner out to trap him. Exasperated, Kulikov asked: "Where can he be hiding?" But Konings had not offered a single clue as to his own position. When darkness came, the two Russians crept back to their own bunker, where they argued for a long time about the German's strategy.

Before dawn, the snipers went back to their hole at the edge of no-man's-land and studied the battlefield again; Konings remained silent. Marveling at the German's patience, Zaitsev began to admire his adversary's professional skill. Fascinated with the intensity of the drama, Kulikov talked animatedly while the sun rose to the meridian and then set behind Mamaev. As another night came suddenly, the combatants went back through their own lines to get some sleep.

The third morning, Zaitsev had a new visitor, a political agitator named Danilov, who came along to witness the contest. At first light, the heavy guns began their normal barrage and while shells whistled over their heads, the Russians eyed the landscape for a telltale presence.

Danilov suddenly raised himself up, shouting: "There he is. I'll point him out to you." Konings shot him in the shoulder. As stretcher bearers took Danilov to the hospital, Vassili Zaitsev stayed very low.

When he put his glasses back on the battlefield, he concentrated on the sector in front of him. On the left was a disabled tank, to the right a pillbox. He ignored the tank because he felt no experienced sniper would use such an exposed target. And the firing slit in the pillbox had been sealed up.

Zaitsev's glasses continued to roam. They passed over a sheet of iron and a pile of bricks lying between the tank and the pillbox. The glasses moved on, and then came back to this odd combination. For minutes Zaitsev lingered over the metal. Trying to read Konings's thoughts, he decided the innocuous rubble was a perfect hiding place.

To test his theory, Zaitsev hung a glove on the end of a piece of wood and slowly raised it above the parapet. A rifle cracked and he pulled the glove down hurriedly. The bullet had bored a hole straight through the cloth from the front. Zaitsev had been correct; Konings was under the sheet of iron.

His friend Nikolai Kulikov agreed. "There's our viper," he whispered.

The Russians backed out of their trench to find another position. Anxious to put the German sniper in a maximum amount of blinding sunlight, they followed the irregularly curving front line until they found a spot where the afternoon sun would be at their backs.

The next morning they were settled into their new nest. To their left, to the east, the Volga ferries again struggled through enemy mortar fire. To the southeast, under the piece of iron sheeting lurked their antagonist, and Kulikov fired a blind shot to arouse the German's curiosity. Then the Russians sat back contentedly.. Aware that the sun would reflect on their scopes, they waited patiently for it to go down behind them. By late afternoon, now wrapped in shade, they had Konings at a disadvantage. Zaitsev focused his telescopic sight on the German's hiding place.

A piece of glass suddenly glinted at the edge of the sheet. Zaitsev motioned to Kulikov, who slowly raised his helmet over the top of the parapet. Konings fired once and Kulikov rose, screaming convincingly. Sensing triumph, the German lifted his head slightly to see his victim. Vassili Zaitsev shot him between the eyes. Konings's head snapped back and his rifle dropped from his hands. Until the sun went down, the telescopic sight glittered and gleamed. At dusk, it winked out.

Before assaulting the factory district, Paulus insisted on eliminating a Russian salient around the town of Orlovka, three miles west of the tractor works.

The order to attack that town was sent to the 60th Motorized Division, and some of its officers complained bitterly. One of them, Lt. Heinrich Klotz, thought it absurd. At forty-three, he commanded the oldest group of men on the battlefield. One-third of them had fought in World War I in which Klotz himself had been wounded.

At a briefing, when he had asked whether tanks would support the assault, his superior answered that there were none to spare. Incensed, the aging lieutenant predicted the failure of the mission. The commanding officer angrily rebuked Klotz and told him to keep his mouth shut. Sourly, he continued, "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but we have to take Orlovka."

In the gray predawn mist, Lieutenant Klotz sat in a hole and thought: This is going to end in slaughter. But when the time came to advance, he wearily waved his arm and led the old men up a hill.

Russian planes suddenly roared over the crest and trapped Klotz's company in the open. Sticks of bombs exploded and right in front of Klotz, two stretcher-bearers simply disappeared. Lying on the ground, he stared at the huge hole where they had been, but he could not see any trace of them. Meanwhile, his troops died under bombs and machine-gun strafings. When the planes left, he shouted at his men to retreat and ran back to his own lines.

That night he went out with medics to pick up the dead and wounded. For hours he called the names of friends he had led into a massacre. Of the 120 men who had gone with him that morning, only thirty returned.

At 60th Motorized Division casualty stations the surgeons worked feverishly to save lives. Almost totally recovered from his broken upper jaw, Dr. Ottmar Kohler had moved his hospital to within a half mile of the front. Stubbornly insisting that all German aid stations treat men within minutes of their being wounded, he had fought the traditions of the German Army. Operating on the victims of the Orlovka battle, Ottmar Kohler knew his radical approach was successful. He was saving men who otherwise would have died, and recently he had been inundated with postcards from convalescent patients back in Germany. All of them thanked him for keeping them alive.